F-9F Cougar – Detail & Scale

Detail & Scale Series – Digital Volume 2
In Detail & Scale book for iPad, iBook, Kindle and Mac
Authors: Bert Kinzey and Rock Roszak
iPad download reviewed here – price $9.99
Review by Geoff Coughlin (August 2014)

Our sincere thanks to Bert Kinzey and Rock Roszak at Detail & Scale for supplying our download – you can see a lot more at their website and buy the downloads here

Introduction

Well, I was seriously impressed by the first new e-book in this series by in Detail & Scale on the F-3H Demon and I summed that title up like this – fantastic! At last, what we have is a major publisher specialising in modelling reference books (and others) that has seen the huge value and potential of the Internet – the ability to offer you the modeller so much more for far less money than if you buy a paper book or magazine. This is exactly what SMN is all about and continues to be since we launched nearly 5 years ago!

This addition to the growing series

The renowned Detail & Scale Series continues with the newest title, F9F Cougar in Detail & Scale, covering the development, history, color schemes, markings, and details of one of the United States Navy’s first operational swept wing jet fighters. Over the past 35 years, Detail & Scale has published six monographs, 69 full sized volumes, and, earlier this year, its first digital-only book, F3H Demon in Detail & Scale. The Digital Detail & Scale Series now continues with F9F Cougar in Detail & Scale, the most comprehensive and detailed book ever published on this iconic aircraft from the Grumman Ironworks.

F9F Cougar in Detail & Scale continues the series focus on specific aircraft details, including cockpit, fuselage, wings, landing gear, engine and armament, but it includes so much more. It features a detailed look at the developmental history of the F9F Cougar that begins with the prototypes, and continues with the F9F-6 in both fighter and photo-reconnaissance versions, and the F9F-7 Allison-engined variant. Finally, it covers the ultimate F9F-8 variant in its fighter, attack, and photo-reconnaissance versions, as well as the two-seat F9F-8T. This aircraft, subsequently designated as the TF-9J, filled a training role with the Navy until the mid-1970s, and was the only version of the Cougar to see combat when the Marines used the aircraft in the Fast FAC role in Vietnam.

We have already reviewed the 1:48 Kitty Hawk kit here and at the time of writing the full build is imminent in SMN.
A comprehensive pilots’ report is included, featuring reminiscences from five Naval aviators who flew every Cougar variant. The aircraft details chapter, long the hallmark of the Detail & Scale Series, covers the cockpit, windscreen and canopy, internal armament, fuselage, wings, pylons & external stores, landing gear, tail and engine assemblies. This chapter alone contains more than 130 photos, mostly in color, that highlight every aspect of this important aircraft.

Another chapter covers all of the paint schemes featured on Cougars as they were flown by the Navy and Marines, including a section on drone and drone controller aircraft. This is followed by a comprehensive, 10-section chapter on Navy and Marine squadrons that flew all variants of the Cougar during its operational service. Finally, as with all books in the Detail & Scale Series, a detailed look at all of the scale model kits that have been released of the Cougar is presented, including a preview of the two new F9F kits being released by the Kitty Hawk Modeling Company in 2014.

What are you getting?

• over 70,000 words of text
• 400+ pages on the iPad
• more than 530 photos
• more than 200 color photos
• color detail drawings
• 43 full-color aircraft profiles
• pilot’s reports from 5 naval aviators who flew every version of the Cougar

What do we think?

Let me put some more meat on the bones…

You can see by the stats above that what you are getting is a book that’s special – highly professional in content and production that ‘works’ exactly as it should and is simplicity itself to download. As soon as I downloaded the book to my iPad, there it was sitting on my shelf in iBooks – great and a double-tap and I was into it.

The F-9F Cougar is covered in excellent depth with many useful captions and notes highlighting the differences between the sub types that will need to be considered when you making your chosen model. There are always details that cause the kit manufacturers to get confused and produce kits that will need correcting and modifying to generate an accurate model and all of these revisions are clearly illustrated in the book – excellent!

Photographs and profiles

The quality of both is extremely high and this add greatly to the title and the addition of supporting photographs always helps to illustrate what is being discussed.

Modellers’ section

The Cougar Details chapter is awesome, it has all the colour plus black and white photos that you could need or want to detail your Kitty Hawk (or other) Cougar models to the highest level.

The whole reference section covers the type in extraordinary detail via largely walkaround-style photos that are exactly what modellers like and want to help them to get the info they need.

A whole chapter is devoted to Cougar paint schemes and some of these are incredible and some of these are accompanied by all-view colour profiles, again, impressive and helpful.

From Page 353 onwards there’s a huge amount of helpful guidance about modelling the type – exactly what this format can provide – extensive coverage and everything but the usual situation with paper books and texts that go just so far then leave out or omit the very detail you want – not good, but so far away from what’s on offer in this new series.

1:144 scale is covered with the Miniwing kits, moving through the old 1:82nd Comet, Aurora and Addar kits, to the more common and readily available (or recently more so) 1:72 and 1:48thkits from the likes of Hasegawa and Kitty Hawk. Completed models are included for the new Kitty Hawk kit and that will be a great help to anyone building it.

In summary

I thought that the Detail & Scale title was very good but this new e-book on the Cougar far exceeds that – incredible, especially given the price. This is the best book I have seen in a long time, by any standards a stunning reference for the type and a genuine one-stop-shop for anyone interested in the F-9F Cougar, its variants and models. You can just have your iPad or Kindle propped up in front of you when working at you bench and merrily dip into and out of all the different sections depending on what you are working on. The price is spot on in my view and you just have to think about the $9.99 it will cost you versus the outstanding quality and quantity of content. Simply stunning and highly recommended.

If I were you, I would also go and visit the Detail & Scale website at www.detailandscale.com. There are numerous photograph sets of a variety of aircraft on display from the Detail & Scale collection.
Geoff Coughlin, Editor www.scalemodellingnow.com